Grimm Tales For Young and Old by Philip Pullman

Pullman's skill as a master storyteller is brought here to bear on Grimm's fairy tales, both familiar and less so.

I own several books of fairy tales including the definitive The Annotated Brothers Grimm so why should I want this? Because Pullman doesn't just regurgitate Grimms' tales, he selects and retells them so beautifully. Because the book itself is beautiful, a large weighty hardback with a ribbon to mark the pages. And because after a hiatus I am now reading to my 9 year old again and together we are discovering / rediscovering the stories that are the underpinning of our culture. Many are disturbing and gruesome, all are annotated with good brief notes on the other versions of these tales in existence.

The Inside Story: The Sisters Grimm Book 8



This is Buckley's 8th Sisters Grimm book and once again it is full tilt.  Daphne and Sabrina Grimm are young sisters, fairy tale detectives and descendents of the great Brothers Grimm.  Along with the boy trickster king Puck they chase their arch enemies Pinocchio and The Master through the Book of Everafter, a kind of interactive storybook created to allow the Everafters - the storybook characters that populate the town of Ferryport Landing - to relive their infamous fables, fairy tales and legends.  But beyond the stories the three children leap through one after another in search of the Master and the girls' kidnapped baby brother something terrible is lurking in the margins and the final showdown turns out only to be a taste of worse to come.

Great fun and the idea of storybook characters being stuck playing out certain roles unable to escape from the boundaries of their stories is quite poignant.  The development of the characters of Sabrina, Daphne and Puck is interesting and sweetly sad too as they leave early childhood and Sabrina has to deal with new emerging emotions.

Clockwork by Philip Pullman (AUDIO)

As the narrator of this scary fairy tale says, Pullman winds up his story and lets it play and it is dark and terrifying in the great tradition of Grimm and Andersen. The people of Glockenheim gather in the White Horse Tavern to hear the young storyteller Fritz tell a ghost story. Slumped at the bar is the clockmaker's apprentice, Karl, who is due to reveal his clockwork figure for the famous town clock the next day but hasn't made it yet. But Fritz has left his story unfinished and counted on being struck by inspiration when he comes to the end. Instead, the story begins to take on a life of its own and a terrible stranger enters the inn and offers Karl his heart's desire, and his choice between right and wrong sets the story ticking on.

Pullman doesn't disappoint, a haunting short read.